Studies show that only 13% of employees worldwide are currently engaged in their jobs. How can companies go about trying to combat this alarming statistic? One successful way of increasing employee engagement is through gamification.

Gamification is a strategy for motivating people to engage in the desired behaviors by creating similar experiences to those found in playing games. Badges are one example of how KaiNexus uses gamification to encourage engagement with the platform and in your improvement culture at large. KaiNexus Badges are virtual icons that symbolize rewards given to users for their achievements, thus promoting a desired set of actions in the platform. We launched Badges as an add-on module several years ago, and have found that the use of KaiNexus Badges leads to increased engagement, collaboration, dedication to improvement, and fun for KaiNexus users.

With the upcoming release of KaiNexus Version 3.0, we’re taking what we’ve learned from the add-on Badges module and bringing the benefit to all of our customers with new Universal Badges!

Universal Badges will be available to all customers, regardless of whether you’re using custom Badges in the existing add-on module. We’ve used all of our research to develop a set of Badges that promote the behaviors we know increase engagement in improvement.

Specifically, these Universal Badges were created to help overcome the initial hurdle of using the system, help people explore the functionality of the app, and encourage people to bring more of their work into the system. Universal Badges are designed to fit into every system, no matter how you do improvement, and will ultimately drive user engagement. Universal Badges can work together with any Custom Badges your team is already using as a part of the add-on module. The adoption of Universal Badges will help bring employees together through fun, collaboration, and friendly competition.

Our Universal Badges include:

Submit an Item! Submitting an Item is one of the most foundational parts of KaiNexus. We want to encourage ALL users to submit Items. Users will receive a badge for submitting any type of Item for the following:

• Improvement Novice: Submit 1st Item 
• Improvement Apprentice: Submit 5th Item
• Improvement Leader: Submit 10th Item
• Improvement All-Star: Submit 50th Item
• Improvement Legend: Submit 100th Item 
  
  

Streaks! Now people can track the number of weeks or months in a row they’ve performed an action in KaiNexus. These streak Badges include submitting an Item, logging in, and clearing notifications to earn the weekly and monthly Badges! Streaks are an excellent way to develop habits in your team. Since studies show it takes an average 66 days to form a habit, streaks are a great way to help instill these habits.

• Captain Capture: Submitting an Item Once a (Weekly/Month)
• Sign-On Spree: Logging in (Weekly/Monthly)
• All Caught Up: Clearing Notifications (Weekly/Monthly)
  
  

KaiNexus Pro Superbadge! Each achievement below gets its own badge and when you accomplish all of the other elements, they all add up to “unlock” the KaiNexus Pro Superbadge! 

• Improvement Novice: Submit 1st Item
• Creative Commenter: Add a Comment
• Attachment Ace: Add a Link or File
• Team Player: Be on the Team
• Problem Resolver: Submit a Resolution / Resolve something
  
  

• KaiNexus Check In: Log in from the app
• Improvement On-the-Go: Submit Item from the app
• Two Thumbs Up: Comment on the app
  
  

Although we encourage organizations to implement all Universal Badges as a set, we understand if you need to pick and choose certain Badges based on your organization.

Reach out to your Customer Success Manager to start using Universal Badges ASAP! We can’t wait to hear what you think!